Quote

Don't go into great detail describing places and things, unless you're ­Margaret Atwood and can paint scenes with language. You don't want descriptions that bring the action, the flow of the story, to a standstill.

Elmore Leonard

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Elmore Leonard
Age: 87 †
Born: 1925
Born: October 11
Died: 2013
Died: August 20
Author
Film Producer
Novelist
Prosaist
Screenwriter
Writer
New Orleans
Louisiana
Dutch Leonard
Elmore John Leonard Jr.
Language
Details
Action
Paint
Standstill
Stories
Flow
Descriptions
Great
Places
Margaret
Things
Scene
Describing
Unless
Detail
Bring
Scenes
Story
Description

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I don't believe in writer's block. I don't know what that is. There are just certain little areas that I know I'm going to get through. It's just a matter of finding a way.
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There are cities that get by on their good looks, offer climate and scenery, views of mountains or oceans, rockbound or with palm trees. And there are cities like Detroit that have to work for a living.
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I don't want the reader to be aware of me as the writer.
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To me, a book is a book, an electronic device is not, and love of books was the reason I started writing.
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Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose.
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I want the reader to know what's going on. So there's never a mystery in my books.
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I left advertising as fast as I could in 1961. And I haven't ever thought about going back.
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It doesn't have to make sense, it just has to sound like it does.
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I try to leave out the parts readers skip.
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I have fun writing. I don't make it a chore. I don't have to struggle with it.
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Everyone has his own sound. I'm not going to presume how to tell anybody how to write.
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I never see my bad guys as simply bad. They want pretty much the same thing that you and I want: they want to be happy.
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I don't judge in my books. I don't have to have the antagonist get shot or the protagonist win. It's just how it comes out. I'm just telling a story.
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I still read Hemingway. I still read his short stories because they're so good. He doesn't waste any words.
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If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it. Or, if proper usage gets in the way, it may have to go. I can't allow what we learned in English composition to disrupt the sound and rhythm of the narrative.
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If you take a few days to write an outline, you're just making up scenes that you think will work, that you think will be interesting. But as you write it, other ideas occur - better ideas that have to do with what you're writing.
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If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.
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Don't worry about what your mother thinks of your language.
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I won't read a book that starts with a description of the weather. I don't read books over 300 pages, though I'll make an exception for Don Delillo.
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I'm very much aware in the writing of dialogue, or even in the narrative too, of a rhythm. There has to be a rhythm with it … Interviewers have said, you like jazz, don’t you? Because we can hear it in your writing. And I thought that was a compliment.
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